[sugar] The limits of Mesh View

[Eben Eliason]

>  1) I don't understand how larger collaboration groups would increase
> scalability. I would think it's the other way around: larger circles ->
> larger radius of unoccupied space -> less icons

Surprisingly, that's not quite the case.  The groups provide
organization, which makes visual parsing much easier.  Moreover, the
XOs within a given group can be drawn quite closely together, so a
fair number of them can be packed into a fairly compact area.

Check out the visual mockups linked below.  In our early designs, we
actually used a clustering algorithm (which is why the code is named
"snowflakelayout") instead of a simple ring.  This, naturally, keeps
things even more compact (that's πrr to our benefit).  However, even
the ring alone makes the view substantially easier to parse, visually,
thus allowing mode overall XOs.  It's really the space between icons
that's so precious.

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Image:Neighborhood.jpg
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Designs/Frame#18

For reference, I think the first link above has about 35 icons on it,
and the latter about 45.  The clusters in the upper right of each
contain 16, so you see that if you had nothing but clusters of 15 or
so people, you could easily display 90 or so XOs and their (6 or so)
activities, inching close to the 100 mark (which is where I topped out
my previous estimate).